The Thick End of the Wedge

I originally wrote this article for a brilliant new website – http://openforideas.org – which is an online magazine focussed on opening up creativity for everyone. It’s about sharing practical skills and techniques so that we can all get better at coming up with ideas. Please check it out, and sign up for the newsletter to get brilliant thoughts from some great writers. And me.

There was a quite brilliant story in May this year about Trinity Mirror, who launched their ‘New Day’ print newspaper to much fanfare in February, only to close it down just three months later.

The reason CEO Simon Fox gave was insightful in itself:

‘At the end of the day, what consumers told us they would do, and what they actually did, were different things. We couldn’t persuade enough people to try the product and make it part of their daily routine.’

MATT CARDY/GETTY IMAGES

You can imagine the scene. A research group is taking place on a Tuesday evening, with eight participants making polite small talk waiting for the moderator to enter. Behind the mirror, a group of strategists have their laptops whirring whilst digging into the free sandwiches and crisps. The participants dutifully answer all the questions that they’re paid to answer, and the strategists type away whilst nodding their approval.

Would you like to have more news that’s relevant to you? Yes.

Are you tired of clickbait journalism that dominates social media? Yes.

Do you miss reading printed newspapers? I remember when I was a kid…

Would you like relevant news delivered to you every morning in a simple and digestible format? Of course!

The participants go home fed and paid, the strategists buoyed by the undeniable evidence that suggests their idea is a winner.

In an ideal world, we start the morning reading the paper whilst eating avocado on toast with Classic FM playing in the background and the kids dressing themselves, tidying their rooms, and walking to school in virtual bubble-wrap to insulate them from danger.

In an ideal world, ‘New Day’ is a great idea.

This is the mistake that is made with most ‘customer’ insight – starting at the thin end of the wedge, with companies talking to customers about what they produce, rather than trying to understanding what is really important to them, and how their company could be most useful.

Most focus groups are, by their very nature, set up to have a focus. To answer a question that’s already been raised, to give thoughts on an idea that’s already been had. Rarely do we just speak to our customers about them and their lives, without some kind of pre-defined script or agenda.

Real insight is something that tells you about how people feel, based on a real-life experiences and behaviours, not a sanitised and aggregated collection of thoughts based on a hypothetical situation or a specific product a company produces.

It’s often just one sentence, one thought, or one story that gives you a perspective that you’ve never heard before, that makes you stop and say ‘huh, now that is interesting…’ Great businesses can be built on one superb human insight – and many bad businesses suffer from paralysis caused by constant exposure to 80 page PDFs, full of people saying how much they’d really value a reward-based points scheme.

If you want to start truly understanding what your customers really want, here’s three simple steps you can take almost without leaving your desk:

Speak 1-to-1

Have more direct, one-on-one conversations with customers, where the only agenda is to listen to what they have to say, not because they’ve complained or because they’re a shareholder. You’ll hear real stories, real emotions, and real problems.

Start broad

Ask about their life, their work, their stresses and their frustrations, what they love to do and would love to do more of. Play a game where if you mention your product, you lose, and have to donate £50 to charity.

Make connections

One conversation on its own isn’t enough. Speak to at least one a week, or one a day if you’re really serious about this. Then get your team together once month, and talk about the stories you heard. Find the connections, the things in common. Then grab post-its and work out how you can be most useful to them.

Thank you for reading this article, I really hope you enjoyed it. If you did, I’d love you to subscribe to my blog at johnjsills.com/subscribe to get new thoughts sent to you on an infrequent basis, and find me on twitter @johnJsills

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